


Putting the Dog to Sleep

by MittenCrab



Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Sickfic, Whump, minor spoilers for RDR2 chapter 1
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 13:50:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16682809
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MittenCrab/pseuds/MittenCrab
Summary: ‘You ain’t gonna die,’ he tells you, eventually, and he sounds almost sure enough for you to believe him.





	Putting the Dog to Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to [besselfcn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fourier/pseuds/besselfcn) for letting me yell about gay cowboys. I owe you my life. 
> 
> Contains minor spoilers for chapter 1 of Red Dead Redemption 2. 
> 
> How the hell John Marston, world's grimiest disaster man, manages to get clawed across the face and somehow not die of sepsis is beyond me and I guess it's probably beyond him too.

‘If I go mad,’ you say into the quiet, ‘you gotta shoot me.’

 

Arthur looks up from his book. Closes it, slowly. Stares straight at you, hard and silent, like he’s trying to work out if you ain’t gone mad already. What’s left of the evening light filters through the cabin window. It settles across the lines of his face, paints his hair with little splinters of gold, and maybe it’s the way your head is swimming with fever or maybe it’s just that age-old way that Arthur Morgan gets to you like an itch right under the skin, but it makes something in your chest ache.

 

‘Pipe the fuck down Marston,’ he says, but there isn’t much venom in it.

 

‘Straight between the eyes,’ you tell him, keeping your one good eye on him all the while as he shifts in the rickety little chair he’s been keeping vigil in for god knows how many hours, and reaches across the space between you to lay the back of his hand on your forehead. His skin feels rough and dry and blessedly cool against yours. ‘I knew a man, went shit-crazy, started howling like the goddamn mutt that bit him. Died biting out his own tongue. Choked on the blood. I get like that, you shoot me in the head first. You hear?’

 

‘All I hear is that you need to be resting, not talking.’

 

‘I mean it,’ you repeat, because he doesn’t seem to understand, and you _need_ him to understand, like you’ve never needed anything so badly in your life. ‘You gotta shoot me, Arthur. I ain’t dying like that.’  
  
You watch as he chews on the words like they’re tobacco, rolls them around on his tongue. He doesn’t take his hand away. There’s sweat damp in your hair and at the back of your neck and a fire in the corner of the cabin, but you’ve felt cold for days, so deep that it gnaws at your bones. You shiver, grit your teeth until your jaw aches.

 

‘You ain’t gonna die,’ he tells you, eventually, and he sounds _almost_ sure enough for you to believe him.

 

And maybe you would, except, you know better. Arthur might be the smart one, always with his books - Dutch’s favourite. But you ain’t stupid. Half of your face is swollen and burning with infection. Hosea won’t tell you, or at least, not directly, but the look on his face each time he strips back the gauze to check the stitches is enough - some mixture of revulsion and grim determination. The scratches have been itching under the bandages, sharp and hot like hellfire, so bad it won’t let you sleep. You almost want to claw the rest of the skin off and finish the job the wolf started. Hosea’s been packing the wounds with herbs and ointments at every chance he gets, but the smell of pus and dying flesh lingers, makes nausea stir constantly in your stomach. You’ve seen enough death to know the smell of it.

 

You’re not quite sure whether Arthur’s trying to convince you or himself. Either way, you’re about to call him out on his horse-shit. _If I ain't dying_ , you want to say,  _why's it hurt so damn bad. If I ain't dying, why can't I breathe right_. But as soon as you've opened your mouth, the words turn to smoke and glass in your throat. You feel your chest seize as you choke on them, cough until your eyes water, until your lungs are raw and your mouth tastes like iron. Cough and keep on coughing. 

 

‘Easy,’ Arthur is saying, over and over again, ‘easy.’ Something is creasing at the corner of his eyes, and if you were a smarter man, maybe you'd read it as concern. His hand has moved to soothe the hair back from your face. He keeps it up as you wheeze for breath, and you think to tell him to stop, that the world is only just outside the door, that the lives you’ve learned to settle for are waiting out there in the cold and the snow. That this isn’t what you agreed. That his mouth on yours in the dark or your name bitten into his fist as he cums aren’t the same as _this_ . That Dutch can only turn a blind eye to so much before this burns all of you.  
  


You don’t tell him to stop. Chalk it up to the whims of a dying man.

 

‘C’mon, John,’ Arthur says, ‘easy now.’ Keeps up the movement of his hand.

 

 _If I ain't dying_ , you think,  _why are you here_.

 

‘I’m not your damn horse’

 

‘Oh, believe me, you’re twice the pain in the ass the horse could ever be.’

 

There’s no real answer to that, so you just grunt instead. Try to focus on drawing breath into your lungs even though it feels like your chest might burst open. When you look at Arthur, there are dark lines underneath his eyes that you don’t remember being there before. Fine mess it is that you’ve both made of yourselves. That you’ve made of each other. You wonder how it came down to this. All these years running alongside each other just to die in some shitty cabin out in the snow.

 

‘You remember that time at Twin Rocks?’ you say, because it feels important, somehow. You’re shivering now, even under the thick wool of the blanket. In the corner, the fire crackles and sparks, but you can’t feel it at all. The back of your neck feels cool and damp with your own sweat.

 

Arthur frowns a little, wrinkles his nose.

 

‘Sure. Hard to forget that shit-hole. What’s Twin Rocks got to do with anything?’

 

You start to laugh, but you aren’t sure why. That makes you cough again, and Arthur waits patiently as you shudder through it, groan at the nauseating ache in your chest.

 

‘Thought we were all gonna die there. D’you remember getting shot? In the saloon?’

 

Arthur nods. He’s humouring you, you realise dimly. The small part of you that’s not too feverish to think straight can’t help but wonder how bad you really are if Arthur Morgan’s letting you run your mouth. The light outside the window is gone now. The sun has sunk down below the mountain.

 

‘You’re bleeding out all over me, and there’s this lady squealing like she’s a damn pig and Dutch, shit, Dutch is yelling and yelling for her to shut her damn mouth, and all I can think’s _what a shitty place to die_ ,’ you laugh, weakly, though you can’t remember why it’s funny.

 

‘You ought to rest,’ Arthur says, firmly, which is supposed to mean _shut up John Marston_ , but you’ve never been one for taking his advice. He’s older than you, and maybe wiser, but that don’t mean shit.

 

‘Y’know, thought I’d die up on that mountain too. Thought I’d freeze before you found me. And the wolves, shit, I could hear ‘em. But you came for me.’

 

Outside the window, the general noise of the camp mingles with the scream of the wind. Pearson is complaining about something or other, but you can’t make out the words he’s saying. Arthur’s hand keeps soothing through your hair, over and over. The side of your face feels hot and raw, as though the skin’s being flayed piece by piece, but you’re so damn _tired_ that you can barely focus on it.

 

‘Never thought I’d be so glad to see your damn face,’ you tell him. The exhaustion is suddenly weighing heavy like it’s right down in the marrow of your bones, and it’s a struggle to keep your eyes from closing. You stare up at Arthur, at the shadows that the fire sends over his face.

 

Arthur stares back at you, in that way that always makes you feel like he’s staring right into your soul. Like he’s working out every part of you all at once, stripping you bare and pulling you open like you’re a deer under his skinning knife. It makes you shudder right from the base of your neck.

 

‘Should never have left,’ you tell him, and if you weren’t half as sick you’d be too proud to, but now your head is thick with fever and the gnawing fear of dying alone, and it seems like the only thing left to say. There ain’t much else he doesn’t already know. You’re so damn tired, you can’t fight it for much longer. Your limbs feel heavy and the ache is so sharp and damn, if this really is it, you don’t want to leave it unsaid.

 

Arthur sits back, and his hand leaves your hair. It feels like the kick of a shotgun straight to your chest. _Don’t let me die alone_ , you think, helplessly.

 

‘You ditched us for a year, John.’ He scrubs a hand down his face, pinches the bridge of his nose between his eyes like he does when he’s drunk too much. ‘A whole damn _year._ ’

 

‘I fucked up,’ you say, like it’s apology enough in itself. You might be dying, but you’re not stupid enough to ask for his forgiveness.

 

He exhales loudly through his nose. Looks away from you, like he’s sick of seeing your damn face, or at least, what’s left of it. You never did have a pretty face like him, and the wolves ain’t exactly made it any better. You wait for him to speak, to say anything at all, but he just stares off at the window.

 

The waiting feels like bricks on your chest, like that time you got caught in a landslide when you weren’t much more than a kid and he dug you out of the rubble, piece by piece. You’re waiting for him to do it again, to lift that goddamn _weight_ from your ribs, to let the air back into your lungs, except this time you’ve buried yourself so deep you aren’t sure he’ll reach you in time. Each long second turns into an hour, and Arthur just sits there, thinking, and you want to scream at him that damn, Morgan, you’re _dying here_ , that he needs to goddamn start digging you out or the weight’s gonna snap your ribs, break them like they’re twigs under a horse’s hoof.

 

‘Arthur,’ you say, weakly. His name on your tongue tastes like death and hope all at once.

 

He finally looks at you again. The firelight is catching in his hair, red and gold, and in your haze you think he’s beautiful like this. If you believed in god, you’d almost think Arthur Morgan was sacred, but you’ve seen him put too many bullets in men's skulls for it to be that simple.

 

When he finally speaks, it’s to say; ‘you’re an idiot, Marston.’ It’s almost tender. He returns his hand to his hair and you want to sob from the relief of it. Maybe you do. You’re too sick to care.

 

The two of you stay like that for some time, you shuddering through the fever and him stroking back your hair. You drift, half outside of yourself, knowing nothing but the sharp, warm pain in your skull and the sound of the wind rattling the window.

 

You blink, heavily, and look him straight in the eye. Hold his gaze as best you can.

 

‘Just promise you’ll shoot me,’ you say, ‘if I start going crazy. You’ve got to.’

 

‘That so? And why’s it gotta be me?’ he asks, and if you weren’t feeling so like death, you’d punch him for that. Punch him so hard he’d have blood in his mouth.  
  
‘You drunk or just stupid? You know damn well why.’

 

‘Yeah, well,’ he smiles, just at the corner of his mouth, like he does when he’s about to rob you blind at poker. Keeps up the steady movement of his hand in your hair, ‘that being the case, you’d better not die on me yet cowboy.’

 

He leans over and kisses you once, just once, quickly, on the side of your forehead that isn’t bandaged up. His lips are chapped from the cold. It ain’t much, but with the infection burning in your blood, for just for a moment you think this wasn’t such a bad life after all. Under the smell of your own stale sweat, there’s the faint, smoky scent of his cigarettes, and it’s comforting in its own way.

 

‘Just rest, you idiot,’ Arthur says, ‘We’re gonna need you.’

 

You’re too exhausted to fight him on it, so you close your eyes. Shiver under your blanket and let yourself doze fitfully to howl of the wind and the warm weight of his hand in your hair.


End file.
